AMD's R700 'Spartan' is the proud recipient of feverish media coverage, with not a day going by without another report on the upcoming behemoth. Today's dose of R700 nourishment comes, courtesy of, Tom's Hardware Taiwan.

Let's indulge, first, in a shot of the suave HD 4870 X2 showing its sheer prowess:

With Tom's Hardware Taiwan having procured an official R700 AMD presentation, we are able to glean some exciting information and, perhaps, turn some speculation into something rather more solid.

We reported on accounts, last week, that the HD 4870 X2 would ship with 2 GB of GDDR5 memory and, as the document below depicts, this is indeed the case:

The other notable information garnered from the above, is that AMD has not listed clock speeds for the 'Spartan' SKU. This is either because these are undecided, or because it is clutching its cards very tightly against its chest, wanting to perhaps exceed NVIDIA's own expectations of the R700's performance, as we reported here.

If avid gamers need some convincing of the R700's sheer strength, the above marketing speak certainly makes for some interesting conversation. The 230 GB/s bandwidth, thanks to the implementation of GDDR5 memory modules, is clearly impressive in comparison to the, soon to be overwhelmed, HD 3870 X2 dual GPU solution.

HD Video aficionados are not expected to be left out in the cold either, as the above image portrays the delights of the, dual RV770 powered part.

Moving on, just what has AMD got to say about the advancements it has achieved with its next-generation R700? Let's take a look at the images above.

A summary of the key features of the R700 can be found in the image above, followed the system requirements in the image below:

It is claimed that a 650 Watt power supply unit will be required to fuel the HD 4870 X2 and, get ready for a 1 KW powerhouse if indulgence with two HD 4870 X2's, using CrossFireX, is up your street.

Eagle eyed readers, may have noticed the August 12th, 2008 date, referred to in the footnotes of a few of the images. There has been some recent speculation about the R700 being ushered in, as early as next week, yet does this put those rumours to rest?

Whatever transpires, the R700 is certainly set to shake up the graphics marketplace, yet NVIDIA will undoubtedly be close behind to try and bridge the performance (and perhaps), price gap.